


nothing to cure the soul, but

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Teasing, all the trappings of formal argument theory without any of the usual ends, asdfghjkl these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 04:52:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: His trials begin with the familiar, rapping cadence of Annatar’s knock upon his door late that night.Which is how most of his challenges have begun recently, come to think of it.But Tyelperinquar dares not let himself think on such circumstances too long. Better to open his door, and have done with the awkwardness.





	nothing to cure the soul, but

**Author's Note:**

  * For [erlkoenig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/erlkoenig/gifts).



> For [erlkoenig](http://archiveofourown.org/users/erlkoenig/pseuds/erlkoenig), who asked for Tyelperinquar/Annatar and "Anything goes!" 
> 
> Title lifted from Oscar Wilde, who once claimed "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."

His trials begin with the familiar, rapping cadence of Annatar’s knock upon his door late that night.

Which is as most of his challenges have begun recently, come to think of it.

But Tyelperinquar dares not let himself think on such circumstances too long. Better to open his door, and have done with the awkwardness.

“I imagine you know why I am here?” As embarrassed as Tyelperinquar is to see his friend tonight, Annatar’s smile is still among his favorite sights in all Eregion – a rare thing, as hard-earned and treasured as any well-wrought gem or scholarly discovery.

“I can imagine a reason or two,” he admits, stepping aside to let Annatar enter. “And most of them reflect rather ill upon me indeed!”

Annatar is rarely so crass or so crude as to laugh aloud at him.

But only _rarely_. Not _never_.

“Do these reasons you are envisioning, Tyelpe, have anything at all to do with your rather magnificently drunken boastings in the hall earlier this evening?” Annatar strides into Tyelperinquar’s rooms with more ease than most could muster even if they owned such chambers. Tyelperinquar can only trail in his wake.

Though it is hardly as if the wake of a god is such a terrible place to be.

“They might,” he concedes as he follows Annatar from his receiving chamber and on into the living space, sounding rueful even to his own ears. “Ai, my friend – I have no idea what could have possessed me to say such things, and I can only pray that you didn’t hear all of them!”

Annatar prowls forward, right to the edge of the hearth and the blaze ensconced within, folding his legs beneath himself with an uncanny grace that leaves him seated in half the time, with half the effort, that such an action would cost a Noldo.

It is cold outdoors, this night. That is the only reason why Tyelperinquar’s breath catches.

 “You know that I hate to disappoint you, my friend, but here I fear that indeed I must.” When Annatar turns, ever so slightly, from his seat by the fire, his face is wreathed in flame and in shadow both.

He is extraordinary, otherworldly, at even the most ordinary of times. Like this, he is –

Tyelperinquar nearly trips as he hastens to fetch a new bottle of wine.

As he said – it is a cold winter’s night, and he is chilled. That is his only excuse.

“That doesn’t exactly tell me how much you heard, though.” Please, not much, he hopes as he returns with the bottle and glasses; in fact, please, nothing at all. . .

Annatar reaches up to accept a fresh glass of wine with something like pity settling across his fire-stained face. “Ah, Tyelpe. I heard all of it, dear heart.”

Stars. . .

Annatar tips the full glass toward him, ever so slightly, in mock salute. “And given your inebriation earlier, my friend, I must admit that I am surprised this is to be your solution of choice!”

Actually, Tyelperinquar’s solution of choice to the embarrassing dilemma that his foolish mouth has landed him in would ideally have involved a cold dunk in the Glanduin and a night bewailing his poor life choices, but knowing that Annatar must surely seek him out at some point had rather curtailed those options.

More wine it was to be, then!

Even as he takes a seat opposite Annatar by the hearth, he can tell that his friend is assessing him. For what purpose, though, Tyelperinquar is steeling himself to discover. “If I ask for an honest recounting of my words earlier this evening, will that make me feel better or worse about your exposure to the lewdness of the Noldor?”

Annatar’s next sip seems calculated to hide some expression – most likely, another of those rare soft smiles.

Dammit.

Tyelperinquar cannot quite contain a moan. “We were playing a drinking game, of course.”

“You were,” Annatar confirms with a murmur into his glass.

“And I am sure it was ‘I call it,’ too.”

“It was,” Annatar repeats, still tucked safely behind his half-full glass. From any other, Tyelperinquar would think himself mocked. From Annatar –

Well, from Annatar he is still being mocked. But it is a gentle, friendly mockery that –

Focus, Tyelperinquar.

“And I was dared to call upon you,” he finishes. This last one is hardly a guess – not that any of the previous were actually truly guesses either – because Tyelperinquar certainly remembers Belil challenging him to take on Annatar as his next subject of scrutiny.

“You were indeed, Tyelpe,” Annatar murmurs. That is definitely a smile playing behind the rim of his glass.

The temptation to simply drain his own glass grows a little stronger. ‘I call it’ is among the most Noldorin of games – an art and a challenge and a provocation all wrapped up in words and bravado and strong drink. One calls one’s targets, and names their supposed weaknesses; one’s challenged target or its makers may try to defend themselves. The evening’s challenges had included a stunning ruby bracelet (“I call it too red! Who wants to have jewelry that will outshine the fires of your forge?”), a new steel alloy valued for its lightness (“I call it too pretty! Anyone would rather look at such a sword than wield it!”), and a linguistic insight into the River-men’s language (“I call it pointless! They’ll be dead in a few seasons anyway!”)

So, if in fact Tyelperinquar did turn such a lens upon Annatar, a being whom he has long wished to see in the light of more than a friend. . .

The things that an uninhibited Tyelperinquar could have said before the rowdy, enabling audience of the Mírdain surely do not bear repetition.

But he must know, if he is to make an even halfway-adequate apology.

“What did I say of you?”

He isn’t begging. He is simply – erm, struggling to gather information.

And Annatar, of course, must suspect that Tyelperinquar is hoping for mercy – ‘nothing too embarrassing, Tyelpe’ would be a most reassuring answer right about now, or even ‘I cannot actually recall, Tyelpe’ would work as well, lie though it is – but instead recounts the entire scene with far too much recollection of detail for Tyelperinquar’s tastes.

“Well, I recall being called unduly reliant upon my spirit,” the Maia says, gravely, as his eyes finally, _finally!_ , lift from his glass. Tyelperinquar groans – that is hardly a promising beginning – but Annatar forges on, gravity rapidly evaporating into something approaching glee as he continues: “And by extension, unable to, ah, how did you phrase it – ‘know the joys of sensation.’ I suspect you meant the five senses, Tyelpe, but it sounded incredibly lewd all the same.”

Stars. . .

“It cannot be enough that I am sorry, Annatar, but please, allow me to at least begin there.” Tyelperinquar’s head hurts, and it is not the wine. He has not had nearly enough, either now or then, to explain the pressure building behind his eyes as anything less than regret. “I am so very sorry for having dragged your person into our temporary madness.”

“Oh?” Annatar murmurs. Coupled with his inscrutable eyes and that flash of momentary glee, it is hardly the most enlightening reaction.

Until, after a few moments’ silence, he continues: “You intend to but begin there? What do you imagine could follow such a heartfelt apology?”

The thing with Annatar – well, one of the things with Annatar – is that he is so damnably hard to read. Here, for instance. Is he implying that the apology is inadequate, or is he teasing? Does he require further demonstrations of Tyelperinquar’s guilt?

Damn him.

_(And does Tyelperinquar mean Annatar here, or himself? Who knows?)_

He can but play along, and hope that he discovers the game before he loses it entirely. “If that were my intention, my friend, how could I follow up upon my apology?”

Annatar shifts, smiling again as he lays his glass aside and shuffles closer with that un-elven, ever-present grace. “You might allow me to prove the utter fallacy of your claims, of course.”

He is less than an arm’s length away, and his eyes are half-lidded, his mouth half-parted – all signs, in an adult of Tyelperinquar’s own people, of emerging lust.

Is he-?

What precisely did Tyelperinquar _say_ of him, earlier tonight in the hall?

“Disprove my claims, then,” he says now, though.

And Annatar’s smile, if anything, grows wider still as he leans forward to close that last distance between them.

Stars.

“It will have to be a most systematic rebuttal upon my part,” Annatar pants, when he finally breaks away. “You catalogued my apparent shortcomings in comprehensive detail, Tyelpe, and I would be remiss to allow even a single part to stand.” His thumb across the bone of Tyelperinquar’s cheeks is warm as a brush of flame.

“Refute them, then.” Even to his own ears Tyelperinquar sounds as out of breath as his friend.

_(associate? partner? lover?)_

“Sight first, then. As it is the attribute that comes to mind most readily, the one through which thou of the Children most readily interface with the world about thee.” With another of his unfollowable alien motions, Annatar is standing above Tyelperinquar. But for all his sudden increase in height, he does not tower, does not loom – he merely sways, a flame made flesh in constant kinesis, as his hands grasp the lower portion of his tunic and lift it, higher higher higher still, until it clears his shoulders throat face head, and –

He is not naked.

But for all the vision he presents half-clothed, he may as well be.

“Dost think that I would craft such a masterpiece, my Tyelpe, unless it were to look upon?” His fingers, long and slender, trail down his own torso with exquisite deliberation.

Tyelperinquar’s mouth has dried. Nothing more of the wine remains.

“Sound, I suppose, comes next.” Annatar settles back to his seat by the hearth, some distance from Tyelperinquar once more, and arches his body with a groan.

It may be a noise of simple contentment.

But every instinct in Tyelperinquar’s marrow screams that it is not.

“In my time in the East,” Annatar continues, allowing the arch of his back to become a graceful curve forward and then permitting that curve to carry him further down, into the small but sumptuous pile formed by his discarded tunic, “I learned a great many things of how thy kind wouldst treat sound.” With another turn, he is laid out supine, stretched near full length across the rug before the hearth with the top of his head lain by Tyelperinquar’s knee and his legs trailing off into the shadows beyond reach of the fire.

But well and gladly do the flames throw their gleaming light upon his torso. The noise that tears itself from Tyelperinquar’s throat would not sound out of place had he been kicked in the gut.

Sound, indeed.

 “What else does that leave thee to have me prove?” Annatar muses, raising one pale hand in languorous inquiry. Tyelperinquar could not say, not even if his life depended on it. “Taste thou have had of me – hast thou not? –“

Tyelperinquar seizes the questing hand, and, something within him burning as hot as the fire before them, presses his lips fervently to its long fingers.

“But thou may have again, and again, and again, as much as thou might wish,” Annatar concedes, making no move to free his hand. “And whenever thou might wish it.”

Why has he settled so far away, when all Tyelperinquar wants _(hah, to say ‘all he wants’ when in truth he wants it all)_ is another, and another, and another, of those effervescent kisses. . .

“Scent, I fear,” Annatar continues as Tyelperinquar, never relinquishing his hand, shifts himself to settle alongside him, “- _ah_! mmm, _Tyelpe_ – I fear, I cannot provide to thee with quite so much ease, unless thou wilt expend some effort of thy own to seek it.” Tyelperinquar is the one who looms above him now; Tyelperinquar, the one whose sudden movements to straddle his lover throw shadows odd and dancing across the room. But Annatar’s is the hand that settles at the back of his neck, gently encouraging him further down, and Tyelperinquar buries his face, panting, in the crook of Annatar’s neck.

All bodies bear some trace of their flesh – not animal, not chemical, but the byproducts of a fine machinery that functions in some limbo between the two – and in this Annatar seems no different. But beneath the muted tang of sweat and the light perfume of wine there is also the suggestion of the metallic, the inferno – not as the after-affects of the tools of their trade, but deeper, a reminder that this is no incarnate creature but an elemental spirit assuming incarnation by his own will.

But Annatar’s pulse beneath Tyelperinquar’s lips is steady and strong, and his hand at the back of Tyelperinquar’s neck remains fixed and firm.

“Wilt thou doubt now, whether I am committed to thee?” Annatar whispers. “Thou hast seen, and heard, and tasted, and smelt, that I am present to thee in all aspects most characteristic of the Firstborn, and that, thus trammeled, I am reliant upon the same sensations as art thou in my relations with the world.”

He is forgetting one sense, though. “Your rebuttal has been most thorough, save in one part only.” Tyelperinquar spares a thought to be proud of himself for the cohesion of this sentence, panted as it is.

“Oh?” Annatar asks, guilelessly, stretching in a most delicious way beneath him. His pulse does not change, does not race, as an Elven lover’s might, but remains steady and sure.

It is not like Annatar to make mistakes, even in a field that is not of his foremost expertise.

With an effort, Tyelperinquar pulls himself back, so that he kneels above Annatar once more. “Surely you are provoking me.”

Annatar smiles, not denying it. “And if I were? What might possibly remain unproven for thee, that we might refute thy concerns of my substandard construction to utter completion?”

Tactioception. _Touch_. Annatar has not named the one sense perhaps most innate, most complicit, in the incarnate sense of the world.

“This,” Tyelperinquar tells him. His own blunt fingers – forge-calloused, work-roughened – linger at Annatar’s chin before trailing softly down his throat and neck, just barely there atop his lover’s glimmering skin as they skim down his chest belly abdomen –

And stop, hovering at the fastenings at his waist.

“You forgot touch,” Tyelperinquar whispers in his turn. “I concede your other points have been well and fully proven, but this last remains a sticking point for me. Let me see that you know and value touch as we do, Annatar?”

 _Please_ , he does not add. But Annatar seems to read that plea upon his face all the same, for he laughs as he draws Tyelperinquar down for one more kiss before guiding his hand exactly where Tyelperinquar had hoped it might go.

 

 


End file.
